Chapter 14
The forty-minute walk felt like forty years. When I finally spotted the modest facade and its faded sign reading “Abrigo das Marias,” I was exhausted, moving on survival instinct alone.
The building stood on a narrow, tree-lined street, squeezed between old warehouses. The blue iron door was locked, but there was a small doorbell beside it. I pressed the button with trembling fingers and waited, my pulse pounding in my throat.
A small window opened, and a pair of dark eyes sized me up for a second before the heavy door was unlocked and swung open.
A woman with weary features but a deeply kind gaze stood before me.
She wore a blue apron over simple clothes.
Her gaze swept over my pitiful state: the torn designer dress, my bleeding feet, my face smeared with mud, and my hands caked with dried blood.
She didn’t look disgusted, nor did she step back. She merely gave a compassionate nod.
“Come in, dear. Come inside.”
“R… Rosa, from the snack bar, told me to look for Célia or Sister Lúcia,” my voice came out like a rough thread.
“I’m Célia,” she replied, closing the iron door behind me and locking out the world outside. The noise from the street was immediately muffled. “My sister has a heart of gold. You’re safe now. Come, I’ll take you to the bathroom. You need a hot shower before anything else.”
Célia didn’t ask me any questions. The shelter, I realized as I walked through the simple slate-floored hallways, was a sanctuary of respectful silence.
Women of various ages passed us by, some sweeping the courtyard, others tending to small children.
They all carried ghosts in their eyes—of abuse, of abandonment, of lives broken by pain. And in that moment, I was one of them.
Célia guided me to a communal bathroom in the back, handed me a clean towel, a yellow bar of soap, and a small plastic basket of donated clothes.
“Take as long as you need. The shower in the back has the hottest water,” she said, lightly touching my shoulder before leaving and closing the door.
I was left alone in the tiled room. I walked over to the sink and, for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours, looked at my reflection in the stained mirror.
I barely recognized myself.
The radiant bride, the loving wife who had woken up in the arms of S?o Paulo’s CEO, was gone. The woman staring back at me in the mirror was a ghost. My eyes were sunken and red, surrounded by dark circles. My hair, once silky and fragrant, was a tangled mass of grime—and there was blood.
I looked at my hands and at the sleeves of my dress. Dona Eleonora’s blood felt fused to my skin. Bile rose to my throat, and a violent urge to vomit overcame me.
With trembling hands, I pulled down the side zipper of the dress and let it fall to the wet floor. I slipped the gold wedding ring off my finger—the weight of that ring now felt like that of a pair of handcuffs—and placed it on the sink.
I stepped into the shower and turned on the hot water.
The impact of the water on my frozen skin made me gasp.
When the water hit the cuts on my feet and the wounds on my hands, the burning sensation was unbearable, but I didn’t care.
I grabbed the bar of soap and scrubbed my hands, arms, and neck.
I scrubbed so hard that my own skin turned red and raw.
I wanted to wash away the blood and rid myself of last night. I wanted to rid myself of Eduardo’s touch on my body, erase his kisses, his false promises, and the humiliation of being thrown out onto the street like trash.
The water running down the drain was dark and reddish, and my tears flowed with it.
I collapsed under the shower, resting my forehead against the cold tiles, crying uncontrollably.
The sound of the water drowned out my sobs, while the pain tore me apart from the inside out.
I had lost everything. My love, my innocence, my life.
When I finally turned off the faucet, the water was cold and my skin was completely wrinkled.
I dried myself with the rough towel and put on the donated clothes. They were way too big for me: a pair of faded gray sweatpants that I had to tie tightly at the waist, and a baggy cotton T-shirt with the logo of an unknown brand.
I looked in the mirror again. Those humble clothes reminded me of my time in the sert?o, the hard days in the resort’s dormitory. Yet, ironically, I felt more authentic in them than in the designer silks of the Vasconcelos family.
I picked up my wedding ring from the sink. The gold glinted, mocking my misery. I clenched my hand around it and tucked it deep into the pocket of my sweatshirt. It was the only thing of value I had.
Célia was waiting for me outside the bathroom and led me to a shared room, pointing to a narrow single bed with clean sheets and a thin blanket.
“Try to get some sleep,” she said sympathetically. “Later we’ll talk about your documents to see how we can help you.”
I nodded silently and sat on the edge of the mattress while Célia left. The room was empty; the other women must have been in the common areas.
The exhaustion weighing on my shoulders was overwhelming. My eyes begged to close, but as soon as silence filled the room, the panic that the hot water had numbed returned threefold.
My pulse went wild. My hands were sweaty.
My mind, struggling to emerge from its state of shock, struggled to process the brutal reality of my situation.
My first instinct—the primal urge I’d felt in the square—was to run away.
I had a solid gold wedding ring in my pocket.
If I could sell it, I could buy a bus ticket back to the Northeast. I could disappear into the countryside of Ceará, return to the dry lands I should never have left, hide from Eduardo, his family, and the pain.
However, a paralyzing chill ran down my spine when I realized I couldn’t do that.
The police…
The memory of Detective Carvalho’s relentless face flashed through my mind. The police station, the twisted questions, the accusations… The housekeeper, Lurdes, pointing her finger at me.
Dona Eleonora did not die of natural causes. It was a violent fall. In the eyes of the Vasconcelos family and the law, it was a homicide, and I was the only person found next to the body, covered in blood. I was the prime suspect.
If I took a bus and left the state of S?o Paulo, I wouldn’t be going home. I’d be running away, and in the eyes of the law, that was the clearest confession of guilt there could be.
If I tried to leave the city, Detective Carvalho would petition the court for pretrial detention.
I would be hunted down. Eduardo, with all his money, influence, and hatred, would use every resource at his company’s disposal and every political connection he possessed to find me.
I would be arrested as a cowardly murderer and thrown into prison without even the right to a defense.
I covered my mouth with both hands, stifling a scream of despair, as I rocked back and forth on the narrow bed in the shelter.
I was trapped.
I was a prisoner in the city I hated most in the world. I had no lawyer, no witnesses, not even a family to defend me, and the sword of justice—sharp and manipulated by the Vasconcelos’ money—hung directly over my head, ready to fall at any moment.
I closed my eyes tightly, burying my face in the pillow that smelled of cheap laundry detergent, realizing with utter terror that surviving the night on the street had been only the first round of a war for which I was completely defenseless.